Pac-Man recently finished his final 1st grade lapbook, all about Manatees! I personally was thrilled with his choice as manatees were my favorite animal as a child and teen, I even adopted one when I was in high school! We both had a lot of fun with this unit, here’ s a few pics of some things we did along with his lapbook!

We did an experiment to learn about how manatees find fresh water when they are in the ocean. We had so much fun learning together and doing an experiment that actually worked! (not many Mommy-led science ideas work).He had a blast painting an underwater scene for the cover of his lapbook…We got everything for this great lapbook from Homeschool Share! I was thrilled to not have to make any templates myself!

I found lots of great manatee books which I added here in our theme bookstore (on the right sidebar look under ocean-manatee). We didn’t get a chance to read all of these, but that’s only because Mommy couldn’t drag her prego hiney to the library!!! Thankfully we own a few!

I am by no means a super-lapbooker, there are many out there and I have learned a TON from them! But I do get a lot of questions regarding lapbooking so I thought I would do my best to put what I have learned all into one post for anyone who is interested!

How do you incorporate, choose, plan, and prepare?

We use lapbooking as a supplemental part of our learning.

We began lapbooking at the beginning of Pac Man’s K year.

We focus our lapbooking topics mostly around science, social studies, and special holidays.

Pac Man (currently age 6 1/2) chooses his own lapbook topic about 99% of the time, that way I can be sure he will be interested in it!

I search for a free lapbook first, and then if I can’t find one already pre-made , then I search online at different printable sites for pieces to incorporate into the lapbook. If I can’t find exactly what I am looking for, I will make my own templates, using Microsoft Publisher. If I make anything, I always share it in PDF form, on our lapbooking webpage.

We usually only have one lapbook going at a time now. When he was in K, we usually had 2 going at one time because his core work was so easy for him. Now that regular schooling is at his level, we usually only work on one supplemental lapbook at a time.

We *do* the lapbook in various ways, but mostly Pac will complete one mini item for the lapbook each day and then when we have exhausted the topic, we will put it all together as a summary. There are many ways of thinking about this though.

Where do you find free lapbooks, helpful tutorials, or other bloggers who show their labooks?

That about covers the basic questions I have received. If you have any others, leave them in the comments below and I will add the answers (if I know) there so others can see them too. If I personally think of anything else, I will edit the original post and add to it! A huge thanks to those who have shared and taught me along the way!

We had big plans this summer to do a few ocean themed lapbooks…but we only ended up with one. We’re OK with that though because that means we were too busy having fun!!! Pac-Man actually finished this a few weeks ago, I just forgot to blog about it!Inside… LEFT SIDETop Left: Whales(a learning sticker book I got at a hoemschool conference)Bottom: Toothed/Baleen Whale sortingTop Right: How Deep do they dive?**

RIGHT SIDETop: Dolphin AnatomyBottom: Different types of dolphins(I laminated and labeled them and we used them throughout the unit)Right Flap Folded In: P wrote a mini book about a dolphin… The Back… a pocket for our whale info**, decorated with whale/dolphin stickers (Pac labeled them too). **all info not linked specifically with a ** came from the Sea World Whales Guide, found here. They have various resources which are WONDERFUL for teaching anything about the sea!!

Better late than never!!! We FINALLY finished our gigantic human body lapbook!!! I honestly forgot about it until last week when I saw it in our drawer!! I knew we only had a few spaces left in it to fill with some review items but still hadn’t found what I wanted to use for fun/review. Then I found a new lapbook on Homeschool Share (such a wonderful site) and found exactly what I was looking for!!!

This is a huge lapbook, the biggest we have ever done, so this will be a long post since I like to share all of the links for what we used to make it easy for someone else who would like to do the same thing! First, here is our webpage for this lapbook, I made 2 of the templates for this lapbook, you can download those there.

I made the cover in Publisher, using a recent photo I had of him. I put Psalm 139:14 down in the corner.

When you first unfold it, you see this. On the left is something cool my friend Shannon gave us, I have no idea where she got it! On the right is all of our Spanish work-learning body parts in Spanish! We used Sold on Spanish for the printouts. Open the left side and you see this…. I made him a little flap book (on the left) all about how he has grown through the years. He wrote a bit about each stage of his life. On the right, he told me what he knew and wanted to know about the body and drew me a picture of the body. On the bottom is a printable I made. In the yellow checked pocket, are fingerprint art cards, from the book Ed Emberley’s Fingerprint Drawing Book, as well as fingerprints from all of our family members–which we used to compare and discuss. The other parts are from the curriculum book we used to base this unit on–How Your Body Works. I highly recommend this book, it was an excellent resource for us. The next section was all about senses and the neurological system. Again, the printables are from the book mentioned above. On the left are a few things cut out from here.In the middle of this section are also printable from the book. I made a pocket to hold the 3 mini books. On the left is a review of the different systems, as well as a Bible verse. On the right is the Ouch mini book I made.

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